Shortly before 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, a tractor-trailer from Rhode Island-based Ocean State Job Lot Charitable Foundation backed into a loading dock at the food bank on Hudson Street.

Once its back door was opened, warehouse manager Tim Dolon and warehouse assistant Josh Vignogna went to work with their forklifts, unloading the 40,000 pounds of donated nonperishable food — everything from spinach to spaghetti — and stacking it wherever they could find space. Their work was done in less than half an hour.

But they knew it wouldn't be in the warehouse for long.

"It will go pretty quickly," predicted Ron VanWarmer, associate director of the food bank — all claimed by one of the food bank's 400 clients, who include soup kitchens, food pantries and other feeding programs in a six-county radius, including Orange, Sullivan and Ulster counties.

The tractor-trailer that arrived in the village Tuesday was part of a convoy of 20 that hit the road this week to deliver 600,000 pounds of food to 13 food banks in New England and New York.

VanWarmer said Job Lot, whose foundation has an ongoing program to support feeding the hungry, has been helping the local food bank for years. When they opened a store in Poughkeepsie earlier this year, they donated a truckload of food then, too. (The food bank also serves programs in Dutchess County, as well as Rockland and Putnam counties.)

In addition to nonperishable food like Tuesday's donation, the food bank also gets perishable items like meat and dairy products, from stores like Stop & Shop. The agency added a third box truck to its own fleet recently, and is planning to add a fourth to handle the increasing load. All told, the food bank delivers about 10 million pounds of food a year to its member agencies, VanWarmer estimated.

mrandall@th-record.com

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